NCAA president Mark Emmert has decided to punish Penn State with severe penalties likely to include a significant loss of scholarships and loss of multiple bowls, a source close to the decision told ESPN's Joe Schad on Sunday morning.

But Penn State will not receive the so-called "death penalty" that would have suspended the program for at least one year, the source said.

The penalties, however, are considered to be so harsh that the death penalty may have been preferable, the source said.

The NCAA will announce "corrective and punitive measures" for Penn State on Monday morning, it said in a statement Sunday. Emmert will reveal the sanctions at 9 a.m. ET in Indianapolis at the organization's headquarters along with Ed Ray, the chairman of the NCAA's executive committee and Oregon State's president, the news release said.

but those victories were not achieved by gaining an unfair competitive advantage on the field by violating NCAA rules

I agree that vacating victories is silly, but consider the "competitive advantage" issue.

Had the Sandusky issue come to light when PSU officials were made aware, how many parents would have welcomed Paterno into their homes and encouraged their kids to attend PSU knowing his hand-picked successor had been revealed as a man who raped children? Is the avoidance of competitive disadvantage the same as competitive advantage?

No one (that I am aware of) believes that PSU deserves sanction because Sandusky raped boys. PSU deserves sanction because Sandusky raped boys and the university knew about it didn't do anything about it for ten years.

Gotta love mass punishment. Went to Fort Dix for basic back in 71. We had a soldier lose his weapon in the field. Whole platoon spent 3 hours looking for it, found it about 11 PM. Got back to the barracks by 1130 and in the bunk by 12. Come 1 AM our drunken platoon Sgt comes in and we are out in the hallway in our BVDs doing push ups. We never did see the Platoon Sgt after that night. Might have been something with mass punishment.
You want to punish a whole lot of people who had nothing to do with the incidents. The coach is dead, the real perp has been found guilty, the 3 other people have not been to trial yet. But lets blow up the whole sports programs, because they were also in the know. Lets not stop there, the Big 10 teams must also have known about it. Lets get them too. Nuke the entire site from orbit—its the only way to be sure

PSU deserves sanction because Sandusky raped boys and the university knew about it didn't do anything about it for ten years.

Well, they did clean house within the last year, albeit belatedly, up to and including the university president. As far is we know, there are no culpable parties still connected to the university, certainly not anyone with the current football team. Paterno is deceased, Sandusky in jail for life.

Penn State will not go unscathed with or without the NCAA sticking its nose into this. There is a major cloud hanging over the university and especially the football program, and justly so. They are likely to suffer more than the usual attrition of football players, and their recruiting in all sports, even their recruiting of non-athlete students, will be impaired until the cloud dissipates. It may take quite some time.

So the NCAA involvement at this late juncture is superfluous, and their sanctions might be considered to be unfair to the (presumably) innocent people who are there now.

I think you’re right that Penn State is going to suffer regardless of any NCAA sanctions. But if I’m the NCAA, I don’t want to let it slide, because every membership organization is ultimately judged for the actions of its membership. The NCAA bylaws are explicit in their requirement of highly ethical, lawful, and civil conduct on behalf of member institutions’ athletic officials, even when the conduct is not directly related to on the field activities.

Sandusky could have raped and murdered a nun on the fifty yard line and PSU would have skated if someone reported it to the police at the time. The underlying crime is horrific, but the problem the NCAA should have is that the highest officials of the member institution covered it up to save the football program.

I agree Penn State should get something. But here is the problem with this. The way the NCAA does things, everyone associated with the crime can be long gone by the time the punishment is rendered. I’m a USC fan and that was my big beef with the NCAA punishment there. Not that there wasn’t guilt....there was (although in hindsight, I’m more than happy to deal with infractions dealing with illegal gifts than with this mess). The problem was that the player involved, the AD, the head coach, etc...were all gone by the time the NCAA came in with the verdict.

What I’d much rather see is to have the NCAA declare individals involved labeled “untouchables”. That is, if you knew and didnt do the right thing, then you are banned for a set term from being involved at an NCAA school. From the Coaching staff to the administration, if you knew about something like this and didn’t speak up, you can’t work at a NCAA college. If the college hires you as even a janitor, they are banned from NCAA participation for as long as you remain an employee. You could vary the term based on the situation (for the Penn State case, I’d think lifetime bans would apply to almost everyone) but at least then you’d be punishing the people who did wrong, not coming in after it was over and punishing people who didn’t have anything to do with it. You might have better success in forcing people to speak up if they knew the penalty could follow them, and they couldn’t just pick up and move and escape the consequences.

So the winnings coach in history covers upccrimes for his dc and hires an assistant to keep him quiet isn’t lack of institutional control? Sorry but yes it does fall into that realm. I would say it gave them a competitive advantage because they kept it quiet.

This is not the first time that a college coach or administrator or athlete has been involved in criminal activity concerning "off the field" matters, activity which does not relate to winning and losing athletic contests. Yet, I don't know of any such case where the NCAA has intervened with penalties against the whole school.

And that is exactly why some serious action should be taken this time.

Whatever wrist slapping took place in the past has certainly not been a deterrent.

It is time to put justice and the interests of the innocents before concerns about revenus, profits, the school itself and its sports program.

Kill the football program forever and turn the stadium grounds into a corn field. Then other schools and officials will get the message.

Sounds like a good plan to me. Shutdown ALL college athletics and let the pro teams pay for their own farm clubs. The loss of their cash cows at the NCAA schools would force them to do a reassessment of what's important. That is, are you educating students or providing a no cost farm team for pro sports?

How likely is it? Not in our life times because the universities are addicted to all the money they get from their jockstraps -- like dopers need their methamphetamine. College sports are boob bait for the bubbas and bubbettes.

Kill the football program forever and turn the stadium grounds into a corn field. Then other schools and officials will get the message.

First of all, that's not going to happen when they have a 100,000+ seat stadium and all the revenue that it generates.

Also, when you now have no one connected with the scandal still at the school - administrators, coaches, players, etc. - when do you say that innocent new people can just proceed with their legal business? There's a time and a place for punishment of the guilty - in the criminal court system. But there has to be a time when the new people do not suffer from the bad actors that proceeded them for crimes that they didn't commit.

What "message" are you talking about? It is highly unlikely that anything close to the sexual molestation of youngsters by coaches has been going on at other schools, and if it has, that coach has likely been dismissed, regardless of how prominent he is. Let's put it this way: coaches have been fired for much less serious criminal or even embarrassing behavior off the field without NCAA intervention.

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